Pope Francis Daily

MEXICO CITY — A missing Mexican priest was found shot dead off the side of a highway in western Mexico days after he was kidnapped from his parish residence, state prosecutors said Sunday. He was the third Roman Catholic priest to be slain in Mexico in the last week.

The Michoacan state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that the Rev. Jose Alfredo Lopez Guillen’s body was found Saturday night in an area called Las Guayabas on the highway between Puruandiro and Zinaparo.

Lopez was kidnapped last Monday, the same day authorities in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz found the bodies of two priests who had been abducted from their parish residence the previous day. They also had been shot.

Their deaths brought to at least 31 the number of priests killed in Mexico since 2006.